Preparedness or Paranoia?

How do you know if you are preparing to survive and overcome realistic scenario or just obsessing with doom and gloom, maybe even focusing on very unlikely or even impossible scenarios while ignoring much more realistic and more probable events? It’s a thin line. People have obsessed and ended up losing not only their time and money, but also their families because of this.
The first question I’d try to answer is “has this ever happened before? Somewhere, sometime in history?” The obvious follow up question is “how often does it happen? Can it happen again this year, this decade, in my life time?”
That alone goes a long way into eliminating 90% of the fantasy scenarios.

Once you have your feet on the ground write two lists side by side. The first one is the SHTF events or emergencies listed by probability of actually happening. This isn’t exact science but the more data you have the better so as to get as close as possible to facts. Keep in mind this will depend on your personal situation and location. The second list has those events in order from most to least eventful or dangerous. For example your car breaking down is kind of likely, but for me it would be a low risk SHTF situation while for someone living in a place where it snows heavily in winter and often drives along isolated roads it would be a higher risk, life threatening event. A military base near by means that you´re close to a potential target in the event of war, but how much more is that of a concern than getting into shape and eating better so as to attack the MUCH more likely AND dangerous scenario of you suffering health complications? Getting attacked by well-organized armed criminals? Probable enough in Argentina or some other hell hole to be a concern, really not that likely where I am now unless you’re a high profile target or involved in some of the most radical groups.

 I’m not saying that you should ignore Black Swans or HI/LP events, some of them are occurring often enough that you should take them into account, again going back to the first question, has this happened and is it likely to happen again, likely to happen, next week, at least once in my lifetime? But people should learn to focus on whats real and not get caught up in fantasies or marketing tricks. The real SHTF stuff is enough to keep us plenty busy and still enjoy life.
FerFAL
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